1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a process accommodating technique for assisting business process improvement and reform.
2. Description of the Related Art
Information technology (IT) has been evolved and there has recently been a growing number of companies and organizations which introduce a workflow management system and ERP (Enterprise Resource Package) using IT to improve and reform a business process (hereinafter, referred to as process). In this case, the existing process must be accommodated in a form usable in the workflow management system and ERP. Furthermore, knowledge is a resource for companies and many companies are introducing knowledge management. As part of the knowledge management, a process knowledge repository is being structured, and process knowledge such as stored best practice applicable to the current business is searched, to be accommodated for process improvement and reform.
For process reform and improvement, the business process of a target organization is modeled. Then, based on the process model, an improvement and reform point is extracted, and an improvement and reform plan is generated, which is then actually implemented and evaluated.
There have been many systems for assisting workflow accommodation, that is, workflow design assistance systems in which business process is modeled by the flow of activities with input resource and output resource in the current business to make the order and flow of the activity efficient therein.
For example, Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 2000-148829 proposes that for business processes, a database has business process patterns corresponding to product design process, general management business process and general work process of the office personnel associated with input parameters. When designing a workflow, a suitable business process pattern is decided from the business process patterns based on the input parameter information.
Similarly, Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 2001-14389 proposes that a server stores a business process pattern including an activity set, control, application and actor as a repository file, and the pattern can be copied from a client terminal when designing a workflow.
Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. Hei 11-85880 proposes that a previously analyzed business process is divided into a stable part and a changeable part, and that based on the stable part, a process pattern including request, executing condition accommodation, executing result notification and executing result evaluation is extracted using the pattern based on the related business form used. The process pattern and the pattern constitute a design pattern. Based on the design pattern, a customer's business process is examined to decide a workflow design specification, and an electronic business form is created based on the examination of the data.
The workflow design assistance system mainly targets process improvement by digitizing business forms. For process reform and improvement, as in the soft systems methodology originally proposed by Checkland, it is important that a target organization for process improvement is assumed that a human activity system is considered as a business-related social context. In this case, as is advocated in the soft systems methodology, it is important that core business processes are modeled from the participants views or recognitions based on plural epistemological space, and plural business processes are accommodated in consideration of the social context in order to create an business process plan for implementation. In the soft systems methodology, coordination among plural business processes defined in each epistemological space is called accommodation. Accommodation is performed through the discussion of the participants in order to decide an implementation process, and then implement the process in an organization as the new business process.
In the soft systems methodology, a process knowledge for accommodation is not supported by a concrete method or a software system. A coordination theory for assisting process accommodation and a system based on the theory do exist, but it cannot be applied easily for the accommodation because of the coordination theory does not take into account of participants' recognitions and views explicitly
In Process Handbook developed by Center for Coordination Science at MIT, based on the method proposed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,819,270, a node for representing dependency between activities is introduced, and a relation between activities is represented via the node as a network diagram. Process Handbook classifies the dependency between activities into three types of resource flow, fit and sharing, and builds the coordination knowledge taxonomy (classification structure) focusing on resource flow. Process Handbook also implements a method in which when accommodating processes, a dependency to be accommodated or managed is searched and plans how to manage the dependency are illustrated. (Reference, MALONE, T. W. et al. 1999. Tools for inventing organizations: Toward a handbook of organizational process. Management Science, 45, 425-443)
Crowston and Osborn (reference, MIT CCS Working paper wp#204) introduce detailed accommodation knowledge such as bidding related to the resource flow, fit and sharing in consideration of an activity executor, and production and consumption order of the resource flow.
The related art mainly targets process improvement focusing on digitizing business form used in a workflow. The related art does not consider a viewpoint of business-related plural organizations and personal object, and to accommodate the viewpoint to reform a business process. For this reason, it is difficult to consider a social context included in the business and to accommodate the viewpoint. Activities to be accommodated can be studied only after a workflow is described in detail.
In the soft systems methodology (hereinafter, referred to as SSM) developed by Checkland et al., a participant's viewpoint is a view of the world (business knowledge viewed from the role of a business process participant), a business process is assumed to be a related system based on a worldview, and the related system is accommodated to explore an executable process. The process reform is thus performed. Coordination between business processes having different viewpoints (coordination between related systems in which SSM calls accommodation) employs a personal method in which business processes are compared using a diagram, and are then discussed between participants to decide an execution plan. For this reason, there is no methodology in which a process reform is assumed to accommodate business processes reflecting plural viewpoints to a possible executable process, the accommodation is systematically assisted using accommodation knowledge stored on a computer and the previous accommodation case, a problem of which a business process planner is unaware of is pointed out, and executable process creation is assisted in consideration of a social context. Therefore it has been a problem that accommodation based upon personal experiences and knowledge is made and the created process executability cannot be ensured. It is also difficult to transfer the previous accommodation knowledge.
It can be considered that using the soft systems methodology, for accommodation, accommodation knowledge from the Coordination theory as the studying result of Malone and Crowston et al. is partially used. The use is limited because there is no methodology for combining plural processes and a viewpoint of a resource is essential for activity accommodation. There is no storage system for storing a process reform process (metaprocess) from process definition to accommodation, execution and evaluation. To learn knowledge related to a process reform, it is necessary to actually take part in a process reform and to receive OJT, thereby learning the knowledge. For this reason, it is difficult to transfer the accommodation knowledge in the previous process improvement and reform.